The opening day of
California’s Conference on Self-Represented Litigants drew a “very enthusiastic
and dedicated group” of about 300 judicial officers, court administrators,
lawyers and self-help center providers, Administrative Director of the Courts
William C. Vickrey said yesterday.

Attendees at the event,
now in its second and final day at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero in San
Francisco, appeared “very committed to trying to reduce the economic barriers
to getting into court and trying to come up with a broad array of ways to
insure the people do have access to the court,” the AOC’s executive director
told the MetNews.

The conference, which
debuted last year, is being hosted by the Judicial Council’s Task Force on
Self-Represented Litigants and will be followed on Friday by a national
conference at the AOC, where experts from across the country will convene to
discuss self-represented litigation.

Task force member and
Second District Court of Appeal Justice Laurie D. Zelon, who is scheduled to
present a workshop today on ethical issues judges face in handing cases with
self-represented litigants, explained the purpose of the state conference:

“It’s to talk about
innovations and best practices, how to educate, how to deal with various issues
that arise. It’s both to share info about what people have already done that’s
been successful and also to talk about what the next steps need to be.”

Members of the local
legal community who are set to speak at the conference today include Los
Angeles Superior Court Managing Research Attorney Kathleen Dixon, who
supervises the court’s JusticeCorps program. Along with Dixon, who is expected
to address the effective use of volunteers, the Neighborhood Legal Services of
Los Angeles County’s Executive Director Neal Dudovitz is scheduled to
participate in a panel on funding strategies used by various county, court, and
legal aid partnerships for self-represented litigant services.

In a previous MetNews
interview, Dixon said she looked forward to this week’s conference as an
opportunity to share lessons learned from the now-three-year-old
JusticeCorps—which trains 100 college-level student interns each year to help
self-represented litigants with the legal process in unlawful detainer, family
law and small claims cases.

Vickrey noted the topic
of self-represented litigation is “gaining interest” in both California and
throughout the country both because of the growing number of individuals who
cannot afford counsel, and the courts’ growing awareness of those who have been
“historically excluded” from access to justice due to economic and other
barriers.

For example, he said,
the Judicial Council of California has for the first time proposed a rule of
court identifying the services of court self-help centers as a “core function”
of the judicial system.

The proposed rule, which
is out for public comment until June 20, provides that court programs designed
to assist self-represented litigants “must be incorporated and budgeted as core
court functions,” and mandates that trial courts include self-help center
funding in their annual budgets. Additionally, proposed rule 10.960 calls for
the AOC to develop and disseminate guidelines and procedures for the operation
of court self-help centers by March 1, 2008.

“Courts need to be part
of the solution in providing the leadership and trying to bring together
elements of local government and private community programs to try to see that
there is a broad based appropriate array of options,” Vickrey remarked.

Zelon said that although
self-help centers are not a completely new aspect of the court’s services—$8.7
million was set aside to fund such centers this year—formally recognizing them
as opposed to treating them as “something that would be nice to do if we could”
would ensure funding and “help in priority-setting.”

Dudovitz added that the
rule would bring clarification and uniformity in self-help services statewide.

“We have so much going
on now in all different courts throughout the state, various models, that we
need to begin to set some limits and some positive influences so that the
courts will take advantage of these systems but also be sure that they really
meet the needs of litigants.”

Yesterday’s conference
agenda included numerous workshops addressing the implementation, impact and
operation of self-help centers, and today’s schedule includes a presentation of
research findings on court self-help assistance.